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It was Valentines this week. To make this week special, I decided to make something sweet for my friends and family. I recently bought 2 boxes of raspberries. Initially I was going to make a cheesecake but at the last minute I craved tart. Tart it is. I have not made frangipane for a while thus I decided to make a frangipane tart with pastry cream.

Tips:
1. For a stronger pistachio taste, toast the pistachios first
2. Pour the hot milk into the eggs not the other way around.

To make the tart, I first made the pate sucre. The frangipane came next. I wanted a roasted pistachio taste to the frangipane so I toasted some pistachios and gournd them till fine. A coffee grounder will do the trick. Butter was then measured and heated. Whipped cream, sugar and eggs where mixed in with the pistachios to form a semi paste and then the cooled butter was poured in. I baked the tart shell for approx 15 minutes first. When done, raspberry jam was spread over the bottom of the tart shell. The Pistachio frangipane was then poured into the tart shell and baked some more. ** I suppose I could blind bake the tart shell with the frangipane in it. But will leave it till next time I make it. Once the pistachio frangipane and tart shell is cooked. The pastry cream was next to come. Once the pastry cream was done. Set it to cool. Once cooled pour over the pistachio frangipane tart and garnish with raspberries. Voila!!!

The weather sure is clouding over as I type this post. I can see the rain drops coming and with that an excuse to stay indoors and take some time to bake up a storm. Vancouver certainly needs the rain though as there are dry patches everywhere. The once greenery has turned brown and crispy due to the lack of rain in the forecast. But now back to the baking. I had some pistachio frangipane sitting in the fridge thus I am making pistachio tarts with white chocolate mousse. To start of the tart I did a pate sucre again. Next I did the pistachio frangipane. I first toasted the pistachios, grounded them and set them aside. Then I melted the butter and combined it with the egg sugar and whipped cream. The ground nuts were then added to make a frangipane mixture. The mixture was then piped into the shells and baked for 20 minutes at 350F. Set aside to cool. To make the chocolate mousse domes, I melted some white chocolate and whipped up some whipped cream. Once the chocolate has cooled a bit, the whipped cream was folded into the chocolate mixture and spooned into the silicone mold. Freeze until set. Assembling: I placed the mousse dome in the centre of the tart and arranged some raspberries around it and voila. Chocolate Mousse